


Test Subjects

by CheerfullyMorbid



Series: Rumors of War [2]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Gen, Kaon City, Pre-War, Science Experiments, Seeker culture, Seekers, Shockwave and his lack of ethics, language barriers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2019-09-24 15:10:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 9,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17102930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CheerfullyMorbid/pseuds/CheerfullyMorbid
Summary: The war hasn't started yet, but Kaon is anything but peaceful. Even in Shockwave's lab, the coming revolution is making waves.





	1. In Which There Is Grief

Her processor was fuzzy, but that didn't soften the horrible absence in her spark. Someone was gone. Someone important. Her thoughts were too sluggish to identify who. She latched on to the knowledge anyway.

She couldn't remember much. Voices, mostly. They talked about flying, about grief, about the secrets of Vos. She remembered air on her wings. Pale servos wrapping around her as the wall hurtled towards them--

It wasn't much. Not enough to distract from the ache in her spark. Not enough to drown out all the hurt in her frame. She was dimly aware of someone touching her. She tried to get a spark reading from them, but her wings weren't sending her any data. The servos put a patch over her shattered optic. Disconnected ruined plating. Did something to her processor, and then everything went dark.

When she onlined again, her thoughts were much clearer, and she didn't hurt nearly as much. She lit her good optic and sat up slowly, taking stock of her surroundings. Someone had placed her in an empty Energon cube, a large one. The walls were tall enough she doubted she'd be able to reach the top, even with her talons at full extension. Someone had set her in a cube like this before, she thought. As a joke? She wasn't sure.

Nothing outside the cube was familiar. A large room, with her on a high shelf. Doctor's equipment lined the walls, and the only real light came from their screens.

Most of the room was dark, and she couldn't see any windows. She twitched a wing at the thought. Tried to twitch a wing, anyway. It didn't feel like it moved.

She glanced over her shoulder and froze. There was an empty space where there should not be. Her wings were gone.

Her wings were _gone_.

Panicking, she tried to back into a corner of the cube, but over balanced. With just one arm and no wings (no _wings_ ) she didn't know how to move her frame anymore.

*******

Shockwave's assistant, Knock Out, grinned as he returned from his supply run. For the sixth time in a row, he'd gotten through Shockwave's security system without any acid-related incidents.

He navigated the dark lab quietly, placing the new Energon and tools where they belonged by memory more than sight, and dropping a data chip someone in the network had slipped him on Shockwave's desk.

He checked the vitals for Subject Delta Three, which were slower than usual, and noted them down. The turbo-fox's tail twitched in recharge.

Deltas Four and Five, twin mech-shaped minicons, were next. They were fine--Shockwave was letting them recover from the last round of testing. A visual inspection revealed they were recharging tangled together, as usual.

Then there was the Seekerlet, which Shockwave was calling Delta Seven. Knock Out wasn't going to ask where Delta Six was, in case the answer was "you." Her vitals were stronger now, he noted, approaching her box. She would probably be ready to have a new arm installed soon.

When he reached her, she was keening. Curled up, far back in her box, and keening as though her spark might break. The stumps of her wing-struts shuddered. She'd been at it for a while, from the looks of it. Her vocalizer spat static every so often, distorting her wails.

The noise was quiet enough to not wake Shockwave, who was in another room, but the assistant glanced askance at Four and Five. How were they recharging through this?

They weren't, apparently. Five had sat up, optics flickering on. Four was starting to shift.

"What's your malfunction?" Five whispered.

"What?" asked Knock Out.

"You see an upset youngling, you comfort it. Basic sense. You're just standing there."

"What about you?"

Five frowned at him. "We're stuck in a box, scrap brain. And she don't speak Kaonite. Talking at her just made it worse."

Well, that wouldn't do. Knock Out had to recharge too, and his berth wasn't in another room. He'd have to calm her down somehow.

He picked up the Seekerlet gingerly, hoping she wouldn't scratch his paint. He'd never spent much time around sparklings. He patted her on the back. "Um, there there?"

Four snorted. "Right, that's going to help."

"What, you could do better?" snapped Knock Out.

"Definitely," said Five. "Give her here."

It was probably against the rules somehow--what if she had a virus and passed it on to them?--but Knock Out was tired. So tired. He could online early and put her back before Shockwave came in.

He set the Seekerlet down next to Four and Five. She was only a little larger than them--the perfect size for them to hug. He flopped onto his berth as the twins murmered to the Seekerlet.

He was in recharge before her keening stopped.


	2. In Which There Is Confusion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Subject Delta Seven meets Shockwave. There are language barriers.

"Acceptable," Shockwave said.

Knock Out twitched violently, and sat up fast enough to make his gyros fuss. "What?"

He blinked at Shockwave, who was standing near the shelves where they kept the test subjects. Looking at the box containing Deltas Four, Five...and Seven. All recharging in a little heap.

Frag. He'd forgotten to get up and put the Seekerlet back in her box.

"Acceptable," Shockwave repeated. "Social contact promotes healthy development."

"Oh. Right. Of course," said Knock Out.

"Ask first next time."

"Yes, sir." He skipped his Energon this time and got straight to work, joining Shockwave at the desk.

Knock Out knew Shockwave hadn't taken him in out of the goodness of his spark; he wasn't going to give the mech any reason to kick him out.

***

She woke up when a giant hand pulled her away from the jabbering minicons.

"Let go!" she shrieked, but stupid grounders never listened and this one was no exception. She clawed when another hand tried to inject something to her fuel lines, making it miss. The hands set her down on the big desk she'd seen in the off-cycle and for the first time, she got a good look at her captors.

A big, big mech looked down at her with a single, massive optic. Like a sparkeater, she thought, though where she'd heard the term she wasn't sure.

Next to him was the shiny red mech that had put her in the box with the jabbering minicons. He was even shinier with the lights on him. He wasn't as huge as the sparkeater mech, but still much too big in her opinion.

Neither had wings. That was so weird.

"Go away," she told them.

They acted as though she hadn't spoken. The sparkeater mech pinned her to the table, while the shiny mech prepped the injector again.

Maybe they hadn't understood her? Grounders weren't supposed to speak Vosnian, were they? She tried Praxian. "Go away!"

The sparkeater said something in a language she couldn't understand, and the shiny mech made the injection. She tensed, waiting for whatever awfulness was in the injector to start hurting, but nothing happened at first. Then her HUD flickered, announcing that her repair nanites had just doubled in number.

Were they...helping her? But grounders didn't help Seekers. They certainly weren't acting like they were helping her. And why would they take her wings? She was sure her wings had survived the...whatever had happened.

It didn't make sense. She stared at the shiny mech as he scooped her up again and dropped her unceremoniously back into the minicons' box. Three small Energon cubes landed next to her. The minicons grabbed two and started jabbering at her again. She ignored them, focusing on the big mechs. They were doing something with a turbo-fox now, opening it up and showing its internals. What was going on?

She tried to ask the minicons, but they just jabbered some more. One patted her shoulder.

The shiny mech glanced over at her and smiled. It was a strange smile. It tried to be pleasant, but didn't touch his optics.

"Fragger," she whispered. She remembered using that word, vaguely. A pale yellow Seeker had scolded her for saying it--her guardian?-- while someone else laughed himself sick.

It seemed appropriate, here. That yellow Seeker might even approve.

***

The guardian tie told him the little one was scared and confused. The Seeker pushed what serenity he could towards her.

She didn't seem to be feeling the sky fever yet, at least. He'd been spark tied to those dying of the fever before. It hurt.

The wind touched his wings, and howled in the canyon behind him. He was alone, for once. He'd told his trine he wanted to be alone for this, and he was fairly sure they hadn't followed this time.

In one servo he held a piece of midriff armor, disconnected from his own chassis. With the talons of his other servo, he carefully etched a name glyph into the metal. Windstorm, his spark mate. His name carried the ferocity of the skies, and the stubbornness to conquer them. A good name.

It wasn't the first name he'd had to add to his armor. Wouldn't be the last. But it still hurt.

He hesitated when it was complete. The Winglords couldn't know where he'd sent his sparkling, or what he was hoping the scientist would do. He had to put something down to represent her, even if it was a lie.

She wasn't old enough to choose a name yet, though, and it felt wrong to just write "little one".

"Beloved little one." That would work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dang it, Seekerlet. Stop stealing my muse.
> 
> If there's a canon Windstorm, I don't know about him. I just needed a Seeker name and it sounded like a good one.


	3. In Which There Is No Sky

Outside Shockwave's lab, the world was shifting.  Sentinel Prime dismissed his Seeker guards, citing the recent bombings and claiming he'd take them back after they'd had time to grieve. An archivist named Orion Pax wrote to Megatronus the revolutionary gladiator, whose speeches had already triggered riots in Tarn.

The Seekerlet knew of none of this. She recharged to dreams of flying beside a large blue Seeker, of perching on a yellow Seeker's shoulder. She woke to confusion and jabbering minicons.

Cycles passed.

The sparkeater mech and the shiny fragger took her away from the jabbering minicons several times. They installed a new right arm, a perfect mirror to her left. They poked and prodded at her thrusters and engine and spark chamber, and strapped her down when she clawed at them.

Once they set her on the sparkeater's desk with a cube thing a quarter her height. She poked at it, when they didn't do anything but stare at her. There were a lot of colored interlocking pieces, and when she turned one, dozens turned in response. She figured out how to open it eventually, and found an Energon treat inside, glowing blue. The shiny fragger patted her back before putting her back with the minicons.

They didn't give her back her wings.

The minicons jabbered, and she started to understand pieces of what they were saying. Sometimes the sparkeater mech would take one of them away, and the other would cling to her until he returned. The turbo-fox didn't online one cycle, and the shiny fragger disappeared and came back with another one.

And every cycle, the sparkeater mech stared at her like he was waiting for something.

It started in the off-cycle.

The shiny fragger was deep in recharge, and the sparkeater mech was nowhere to be seen, though that didn't mean he wasn't nearby. The minicons grabbed her and turned her to face them.

" _Rumble_ ," one said, patting his own chassis, and then " _Frenzy_ ," tapping the other one.

" _You?_ " The 'Frenzy' minicon asked, tapping her shoulder. "You" was one of the words she'd picked up quickly.

They'd repeated this ritual any time the big mechs weren't watching, and she still wasn't sure what it meant. Part of her processor thought the answer was obvious, but it was one of the parts that didn't talk well to the rest of her processor anymore. It couldn't tell her the answer.

She felt a strange tightness in her spark, but ignored it. Her spark had been feeling odd ever since she'd woke up here.

" _Rumble_ ," she said, poking the 'Rumble' minicon. He nodded at her eagerly, a smile crossing his faceplate. " _Frenzy_ ," she poked the other one.

The 'Frenzy' minicon grabbed her servo and turned it so she was pointing at her own chassis. Whatever he said after that, she couldn't understand.

She pulled her servo free. "You're weird," she told them.

"Weird," the 'Rumble' minicon repeated, though he said it wrong. The 'Frenzy' minicon started jabbering again.

She vented heavily and lay back. No one here knew how to talk properly.

The stumps of her wings felt wrong, being pinned down like that. She rolled over so they could feel the air.

That felt wrong too. She stood, wrapping her arms around her cockpit. She leaned her helm against the clear wall, looking out at the rest of the room. The new turbo-fox, leashed to the massive desk, shuffled in recharge. Otherwise, the space was quiet.

Too quiet. She needed wind.

There wasn't any here. Sometimes when the big mechs moved they displaced air, but that wasn't the same at all.

She needed the sky.

She stretched up, balancing on the very tips of her thrusters, reaching her new servo towards the top edge of the box. Her talons scratched the wall near the top, but that was it.

She tried igniting her thrusters. Static shot through her processor, the same as every other time she'd tried. Ow.

The Frenzy minicon came up beside her. He grabbed her shoulder and tugged her back, jabbering quickly and quietly. She went with him, walking backwards, then broke free and took a running leap for the top of the box. Her talons clipped the edge.

For a fraction of an instant she thought she'd make it. Then she clattered back down. The Rumble came up beside her, jabbering softly. She recognized a handful of words: _kid, sorry,_ and _stuck_. "I need the sky," she said. The tightness in her spark was becoming unbearable, like her very spark chamber was shrinking.

But she was stuck here, far from the sky.

* * *

When Knock Out woke, Shockwave already had the Seekerlet on an examination table.

"The first symptoms of sky fever are starting," Shockwave rumbled.

Knock Out studied her. She was babbling in Seeker-talk again. "Should we get her a language chip? It might be easier to understand what's going on with her." Shockwave had gotten Knock Out a Cy-Stan language chip recently, and he wasn't sure how he'd lived without it.

"Younglings take too long integrating new language chips," Shockwave said. "She's learning Kaonite quickly enough."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about this.


	4. In Which There Is Stubbornness

Knock Out ran the buffer over his left vambrace carefully. He liked being shiny and clean. He'd never had the chance to try it before Shockwave took him in.

The lab was quiet. Shockwave had the turbo-fox in the next room. Deltas Four and Five, the minicons, were still in stasis after their last operation. The only movement came from the far side of the room.

Subject Delta Seven paced restlessly in her container, talons flexing, remaining optic over-bright. The walls of her box were lined with deep scratches from her attempts to get out. Shockwave had ordered her separated from Deltas Four and Five, as one of the few records he'd tracked down about sky fever said it could make a Seeker violent.

More violent. They were warbuilds, after all. Knock Out had felt those talons enough to know that the Seekerlet was vicious with or without sky fever. He certainly didn't want to have to piece together the little minicons after she got through with them.

So far, though, this sky fever wasn't as horrifying as Knock Out had expected it to be. Delta Seven was agitated, sure, but she'd been agitated since that Seeker brought her. Her spark pulse was faster than it ought to be, but her other vitals were acceptable. She clicked something in Seeker-talk every so often, the same phrase every time, but it wasn't nearly so disruptive as what Four and Five did when upset. She'd calmed down a lot since he'd put the holo-news on, though there was no way she could understand it.

They didn't have any way of knowing what was going on in her processor, which bothered him. Shockwave's medic coding let him look at her systems, which gave some insight to her emotional state, but thoughts? What she was actually experiencing? No way. If there were any Hackers or Telepaths alive still, the Council had them. And she still didn't speak much Kaonite, so they couldn't just ask her yet.

It had only been a quartex. There was sure to be more trouble involving the Seekerlet eventually, but for now Knock Out had other concerns. The Festival of Sparks was coming up, and Shockwave wanted him to study the development of one of the sparklings that would be forming outside of Kaon.

Without getting spotted. Joy. But Knock Out would manage. He always did. 

Polishing complete, he muted the news and grabbed one of the medical texts Shockwave had given him once he'd integrated Cy-Stan. He flipped through the different diagrams of protoform development stages and started reading about identifying frame type.

***

They said that Kaon's gladiator Pits were unique in all of Cybertron. No other city could be so depraved, could have so many mecha take delight in the suffering of others.

"They" were wrong. Kaon's Pits were unique only for their publicity. They had counterparts in every major city on Cybertron.

Soundwave knew, because his faceplate was shredded in Iacon's Arena.

He limped back to his tiny room afterwards, ignoring the looks the guards and other gladiators gave him, ignoring the Energon dripping over his optics and turning everything he saw blue.

Less easy to ignore were the thoughts swirling around him. They weren't fools. He'd moved too fast at the end of that fight, dodged too easily, despite his injuries. Almost like he'd known what Motormaster was thinking. At least six people had reported him to the Council already. 

He blocked out as many of their processors as he could, and pressed on to his room, where the minicons were waiting. 

They gathered around as soon as he shut the door. Buzzsaw pulled a first-aid kit from subspace, and helped him start to patch up the worst of it. Ratbat latched himself to his undamaged leg. Ravage paced, tail lashing, and Laserbeak clung to the single bare light bulb like an oversized circuit-moth. 

None of them spoke. They never did, the first few joors after a match. They didn't have to. Soundwave would hear them anyway. 

Ratbat was worrying. He could feel Soundwave's distress and pain through the sibling bond, however much Soundwave tried to keep it from him. 

Ravage wanted to shred something, but held himself back. Besides the berth, there wasn't anything in this tiny room to shred, and if he went into the air ducts in this mood he'd be heard. 

Buzzsaw was worried about the ruin of his once-handsome faceplate, and the severity of his other injuries. He was thinking about medics he could bribe. 

Laserbeak had been with him the longest. She knew he only felt this afraid when they'd been discovered. She recognized the glyph. 

Soundwave tried to speak, but only static emerged. His vocalizer was damaged, and he hadn't even noticed. He pushed the words into their minds instead. 

They don't know about you. They'd been very careful about that, using the air ducts to come and go, avoiding Soundwave in public. I alone have been discovered. Run. They'll be coming for me soon. 

He'd run before, disappeared. But now he was wounded, and his faceplate's wounds would be impossible to hide. There'd be no escape this time, but the minicons could get away. 

Laserbeak left without a word. She'd been his spark sister and survived for so long because she knew to prioritize her own life. She'd stay near, he knew, close enough to help him balance his telepathy, but not close enough to be seen.

Ravage paused for several clicks, forcing himself to calm. He nodded to Soundwave, then carefully placed his jaws around little Ratbat, trying to pry him off Soundwave's leg. 

Ratbat didn't want to go. Neither did Buzzsaw, who didn't like how much Energon Soundwave was leaking. Soundwave nudged at their minds, but no. They were staying. Ravage walked away after a lingering glance at Ratbat. 

"They'll know to look for someone you've got family bonds to," Ratbat said, breaking the silence. "Running doesn't mean we'd be safe."

Soundwave hadn't thought of that. Buzzsaw thought that, if the Council's mechs found them, they might not think to look for Ravage and Laserbeak. 

But then Ratbat and Buzzsaw would be in danger. Soundwave couldn't have that. He pushed, again, for them to leave. 

"No," Buzzsaw said, pinching a major fuel line closed with his talons. 

And that was that. The three of them huddled in Soundwave's tiny room, listening as the murmers outside grew louder. 

They waited. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soundwave appears! And the rest of the Cassettes! Sure hope nothing bad happens to any of them...


	5. In Which There Is Ferocity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She ponders the pieces left in her memory files.

She had to keep moving. There was nowhere to move. 

She paced a precise figure-eight in the box she'd been stuck in, twelve steps a rotation. Her thrusters hurt, but she couldn't stop. 

The ceiling got lower every time she slowed down. 

"I need the sky," she said, again and again, but no one listened. 

She was trapped. How long had she been here? 

If she thought about the voices in her memory, she could forget for a moment all the hurt in her being. 

"It is an honor to be a warbuild." A deep, rich voice. "It means Primus trusts us to defend our fellow sparks."

"When you're not sure whether to trust someone, use your wings. They'll tell you a lot about that person's spark."

"Please say that again in front of Windstorm, his reaction will be hilarious." A voice with laughter in it.

"We took to the skies, and swore we would never be caged again."

"Wars never end, not really. They left our planet, but we keep having to chase them away again. The peacebuilds don't get that." A light tenor. 

"Skyblast isn't coming home, bitlet."

She stilled at that memory. 

"Why's he called a Winglord if he hasn't got wings?" Her own voice. 

"We protect Primus. We protect our skies. We do what we must. Even if it breaks our sparks." 

"A Seeker of Vos bows to no one." A determined soprano. 

"They think we're expendable, not worth saving. That's why she died."

"They didn't even bother to be polite about it, just said right out that they don't take Seekers as students." A scratchy voice.

"After you upgrade, we'll take you to the Luna 1 base. Non-Seekers don't know about it. Safest place in the system for mecha like us."

"I'll help you put her name on your armor. That way, Skyblast will always be with you." That deep voice again. 

They were all jumbled up, out of order. She treasured them anyway.

But there weren't very many of them, all things considered. There must have been more at some point, names and faces to match voices, history rather than fragments, but they were gone now. 

She wondered where the Seekers in her memory were. Did they know she was in this terrible place? Had they left her here? Why? Did they know she couldn't fly? 

She needed the sky. Couldn't anyone see that? 

The sparkeater mech came in and sent the shiny fragger towards her. She glared at him as he came closer. 

If they weren't going to give her the sky, she would have to fight for it. 

***

Rumble needed recharge, but a twinge from his internals had woken him, and now he couldn't stop being awake. He was exhausted, his systems were warning him against even transforming, and Frenzy was using his legs as a pillow, so he couldn't get up, but he could sit partway up and check on the bitlet.

She'd finally stopped pacing. Now she just stood in the center of her box, clicking quietly to herself. 

Shocky and Delta Six kept waiting for something interesting to happen with her, but all Rumble saw was a sparkling stuck alone in a box. 

A barely nine-vorn sparkling, if Shocky's numbers could be trusted. The mech was a rotten glitch, but he didn't usually lie about numbers. 

Delta Six approached the Seekerlet's box and scooped her out. She held strangely still for it, rather than flailing and clawing like usual. 

Then she slid her talons between the plating of his wrist and _sliced_. 

Energon sprayed. Delta Six yelled, curling his injured arm over his spark and dropping the Seekerlet in the process. There was a concerning crack when she hit the floor, but she stood anyway, and bolted for the shadows on the edges of the room.

The drones caught her inside of twenty clicks, but they were the best twenty clicks Rumble had had in...well, ever. 

Frenzy shifted, picking up on Rumble's delight through the bond. He flickered bleary optics at his twin. "Whuzzhappnin?"

It made his frame ache, but Rumble just laughed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Though she be little, she be fierce!


	6. In Which There Is Resolve

They put sedatives in the Seekerlet's Energon the next cycle. Knock Out wasn't going to pick her up again while she was awake, and Shockwave seemed to agree with him.

Shockwave synced in with her limp frame, single optic flickering as he processed the data.

"Any signs of a virus?" Knock Out asked. That was one of their stronger hypotheses about the cause of sky fever. But Shockwave shook his helm and remained silent for several long clicks. 

"Her battle programming is activated," he said at last. "It has taken over higher processing."

"She has battle programming?"

"Warbuilds are sparked with it. It is unusual to see it activated before the first upgrade."

"Can you shut it down? Delete it?" Knock Out asked.

"She has too much damaged or missing coding already. Any more would risk a fatal crash. I can reset it, but it may simply activate again." His optic dimmed as he pushed the reset through, before he disconnected. He reached for the pieces he'd been preparing for the Seekerlet's new optic.

While Shockwave was occupied, Knock Out ran the usual scans over the Seekerlet, which was much easier without the squirming. Her nanite production was even lower than last time, he noted. And she'd banged up her left thruster something awful in that fall...

Had those microfractures been there this whole time?

He pulled up files of previous scans and ran through them. The microfractures had started appearing around her joints just three cycles in to their examination, but they'd been so small and insignificant in the face of every other issue the Seekerlet had, they hadn't taken note.

They were getting worse now. It reminded Knock Out of something from his studies--he just wasn't sure what. And of something from the mines, one of the worse times. He tapped his fingers along the table, closely studying the Seekerlet.

"Shouldn't you be getting ready for the Festival?" Shockwave asked. He had everything assembled to install the new optic.

"Yes, sir." He'd come back to this later.

***

Her instincts said to fight, but there wasn't anything to fight anymore. There'd been a glitch-mouse in her box with her when she woke up, but it was in pieces now. 

She'd snuffed out its spark, she realized. She wasn't supposed to do that. Hadn't meant to. She was created to protect other sparks, not hurt them. Even little glitch-mouse sparks.

She needed the sky. There was Energon on her talons and her frame burned and her new optic wasn't the right shade of orange and she needed the sky.

She sent the command to activate her thrusters. A spike of pain went through her processor, making her curl up with her arms around her helm.

Slowly, slowly, she stood back up. And tried again.

The results were the same, but she did it again. And again. A Seeker of Vos does not bow.

When her processor seemed at risk of overheating, she switched tactics. She traced a square into the side of the box with her talons, just big enough for her frame to fit through without her wings. With the sparkeater mech busy tormenting the Frenzy minicon, and the shiny one out of sight, she scraped at the shape of the square. She used a piece of the glitch-mouse's frame, since it was there. No need to blunt her talons. 

A Seeker of Vos does not bow. If she couldn't get to the sky one way, she'd find another, and she'd bring the sparkeater's world crashing around his pedes if she could manage it. 

***

He should block off the guardian tie, he knew. His little one was too young to know not to broadcast her pain and fear through their spark tie, and he couldn't afford to be distracted. 

But what if Shockwave failed? What if her spark went home and he didn't feel it because he'd walled himself off from her? As painful as it was to feel a loved one leave him, he didn't want to miss it if it happened. 

His trine worried about him, he knew. When Windstorm's spark went home, he'd almost fallen out of the sky. He would have, if Skywarp hadn't caught him. They thought he was depressed, perhaps suicidal. 

He wasn't. He just needed time. Time that wasn't easy to come by these cycles, granted, but he would be fine. 

The torrent of feelings through the guardian tie changed. There was still pain, and fear, enough to make him itch to fly to Kaon, and Pit with the consequences. But there was also resolve, a steely determination that belonged to someone far older. 

Thundercracker smiled as he finally blocked off the guardian tie. His fledgling would be just fine. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise!


	7. In Which There Is A Festival

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Knock Out attends the Festival of Sparks.

Knock Out strolled along the broad skyways of Upper Kaon, headed for the Lord Steward's palace. He kept his posture confident, though not too confident, and an easy grin on his faceplate. He smiled and nodded at the bots who passed, and bobbed his helm to the Festival music. Hopefully, no one would take note of him in the crowds. An awful lot of rich mechs were out and about this cycle. 

Did Shockwave really have to insist he break in to the most prominent building in Kaon, during the Festival of Sparks? Really? 

There weren't as many guards as he expected, though, and one of the glitch-mouse drones took care of the cameras when Knock Out approached a service entrance. Maybe Shockwave's intel was right, and the Lord Steward was at the Pits watching a fight, Festival notwithstanding. Nobles were weird. 

He kept to narrow, dimly-lit corridors, where only guards and servants were likely to pass. One servant hurried by, but she didn't even give Knock Out a glance. There were benefits to having an ambiguous frame type. No one could tell his function just from looking. He could belong (almost) anywhere. 

He found the lift to the tallest steeple, just where Shockwave had said it would be. He must have hacked the blueprints or something. Knock Out wasn't going to ask. The lift beeped cheerily at him when it let him out on the roof. 

There was work to be doing, but Knock Out took a moment to look at the sky. You could hardly ever see it in Lower Kaon, except maybe a tiny slice if you stood in just the right place. You never saw it in Under Kaon. Up here, it was huge. The sun's light was fading on the horizon, and off to the north--how could anyone be used to seeing so far?--there were the tiny, distant sparks the Festival was named for. 

The sight of the sparks got Knock Out moving again. He needed to be outside the city wall before they reached Kaon. 

He hauled Shockwave's device out of his subspace, using magnetic clamps to secure it to the spire wall. It was an innocuous-looking thing, if you ignored the pointy bits sticking off the sides. Shockwave hadn't told him what it did, and Knock Out hadn't asked. He was trying not to think too hard about it, especially the part where he wasn't supposed to put it back in subspace for the trip back. 

The glimpse of the sky stayed with him as he descended to the lower levels, heading now for the western sector. The mechs he drove past were actually cheerful, for once--a dark cycle off and cheap high-grade could do that. The Festival really only mattered to those who could afford the luxury of celebrating, who lived high enough to see the sky. Down here, it didn't mean anything. Knock Out had never celebrated it. Some of the more religious mechs in the mines had made sure to mark the cycle, but they'd all died quick. Maybe that was a blessing. 

There was a disused maintenance hatch at ground level on the western wall of the city. Knock Out got to and through it the same way he'd gotten into the palace, by walking like he knew what he was doing. 

He did not know what he was doing, but then, did anyone?

Kaon stood in the center of a massive canyon, and apart from the road to Tarn, the landscape around it was rough. Lots of sharp, broken stones of iron. Lots of random trickles of rusty fluid from the last acid rain storm. Knock Out carefully stepped through it all, sensors on high alert. It felt wrong not to have walls close in. In the twilight he couldn't actually see all the space around him, but he knew it was there. 

He wasn't the only one out here, of course--there'd be Enforcers and government workers and such nearby, keeping track of the incoming sparks. He'd have to avoid them, and hope a spark landed somewhere no one thought to look. One probably would. Kaon was a city where it was easy to fall through the cracks. 

He found a secluded spot, between two great boulders leaning against each other. He had to sit to fit, which would be murder on his finish, but he was hidden, and he could see a large section of the canyon. 

Just in time; the sparks were here. 

Knock Out had seen sparks before. He'd scanned Delta Seven's spark a dozen times. But these sparks were different, newer. 

They swirled through the air, thousands of them, dancing around each other on breezes Knock Out couldn't sense. Tiny points of pure white light, that soon would become mechs and minicons and maybe even a Predacon or two. Innocent, the way only newsparks could be, darting around the broken stones like sparklings at a playground. Knock Out thought he could hear giggling, or singing. He reset his audials.

In the light of the sparks, the dark canyon was bright as if floodlit, every dull rock gleaming. Even the city's dirty outer wall shone. 

And then they started to land. The first one, Knock Out saw embed itself atop a tall boulder. A future flyer, likely. Another one split itself into two before they burrowed into the base of the wall. He spotted figures approaching them, but they didn't notice him. 

Two sparks came close to Knock Out, still spinning around each other. He stood cautiously; you didn't want to get between a spark and wherever it chose to land. The medical texts all said that was a bad idea. 

The sparks dove for Knock Out's former hideout. One went for the narrow point before the two boulders touched, touching down softly. The other took an open bit of ground just meters away.

Full of energy, fresh from the Well of Allsparks, the metal around them reacted quickly. Curls lifted up around both sparks, the beginnings of their spark chambers. Over the next quartexes, they'd leech enough metals from their surroundings to build the entirety of their sparkling frames, according to blueprints tied to their sparks. 

It was beautiful, maybe even holy, seeing these first beginnings of life. How could the Lord Steward spend this event watching a gladiator fight? For a moment, Knock Out found himself wondering if maybe that Primus slag was really slag after all. 

No. Probably his emotional core needed to debug, that was all. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was really hard to write, in part because I was so excited about it, and in part because Knock Out is uncooperative. But here it is! 
> 
> As for those two sparks Knock Out is watching, I'll give you a hint to their identities: one is from Prime. One is from Bayverse, because canon done them wrong.


	8. In Which There Is Progress, Maybe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We check back in with Soundwave, who isn't very happy. Meanwhile, Knock Out has an idea about sky fever.

__

__

The first thing they did, after hauling Soundwave into a Council facility that certainly wasn't in any public records, was take Ratbat and Buzzsaw away. 

Far away, at least a city block. Too far too lean on them enough to keep his mind in his own processor. Laserbeak and Ravage had followed, were close, but it wasn't nearly as helpful with just two. At least they weren't damaged. 

His captors shoved Soundwave into a tiny, dark room, asking questions. Soundwave ignored them. His vocalizer was useless anyway. And it was all he could do to keep his sense of self in the midst of his questioners' worry, the guards' boredom, the sting of stasis cuffs on another prisoner's wrists. Nearby, someone was worried about paying rent, and someone else had a song stuck in their processor about circuit-moths and starlight, and someone was writing a report about the discovery of a new telepath, him, and someone thought about the sparklings they'd be seeing in the next quartexes, and someone hoped this would get her a promotion and someone was scraping their digits along the wall and making a horrible shriek and someone thought the drugs were working and a terrible ache was building in someone's processor, no that was his, and someone thought the Hacker couldn't be trusted and someone was...someone...

He came back to himself, jours later, feeling like Motormaster had used his helm for a kickball. 

"Welcome back," said a soft voice.

Soundwave looked up, searching. There was a wall at his back, and energy bars on his other three sides. To his right sat a red mech, likewise trapped. He must have spoken. 

Something was wrong. Soundwave couldn't hear him. He'd heard him speak, but he couldn't hear him. His mind. It was silent!

"No, no, calm down," the red mech said, Energon blue optics widening. "That's just the drug's aftereffects. You'll start hearing thoughts again in a cycle or two."

Soundwave tried to speak, but his vocalizer just made a half-sparked burst of static.

"I'm Blaster," the red mech said. "Don't worry about talking, I can hear what you want to say."

He was like Soundwave. Strange.

Blaster grinned. "Yeah, I am. Thought I was the last one, then they dragged you in."

There were others? 

"There used to be. They're all deactivated or reprogrammed now." Blaster leaned back against the wall, optics darkening. "There was a group of us, a dozen or so, hiding out in the wilds. A couple of nomadic clans helped keep us hidden. But then...well. We got found. I was a third-frame when it happened. Been here ever since. You're the first friendly face I've seen in quite some time."

Soundwave felt for his face, crusted with dried Energon. The cuts were still there. Of course they were.

"Sorry. Sore subject," Blaster said, shaking his helm.

Soundwave wondered at him. He seemed remarkably coherent for a telepath with all his spark bonds broken.

Blaster shook his helm. "I'm not as powerful as you. In here, it's rare I've got more than a couple of minds in my range. Makes it easier. You're sort of incredible. You've got a huge range, I heard it when they brought you in. I'm fairly weak for a telepath. S'why they've mostly left me alone."

Soundwave suspected that he would not be so lucky. Blaster didn't contradict him.

Primus, were the minicons okay? He fumbled for the bonds, feeling oddly lost without his telepathy to guide him to them. Blaster stayed silent as he reached through his spark.

They were worried, but not hurting. Thank Primus.

Blaster asked, "Do you listen to music much? I haven't heard any new songs in vorns. S'not the same listening to memories of music, but it's nice."

It hurt to smile, but Soundwave did it anyway. He dug through his memory files, unwilling to think about the harsh music they played during gladiator matches.

He came up with something from his youngling days in Simfur. Before Iacon, before the Arena. Before a lot of things. It was a hymn sung at the Temple of Allsparks. He replayed it and watched as Blaster's frame relaxed. He found himself relaxing, too, despite everything.

Blaster smiled faintly. "That's pretty."

* 

The sparkeater mech caught her scraping away at her box. Of course he did. And he grabbed her and shook her and said "No" in the jabber language, before dropping her in a new box without any debris she could use.

She tried to slice his fuel lines open like she had the shiny mech's, but he didn't give her a chance. He moved far too quickly for such a big mech.

Which left her in a box with nothing to distract her from the fact that she was utterly, thoroughly glitched.

She snarled at Rumble when he called to her. Snarled! At Rumble! She liked Rumble! But she couldn't help it, the moment he or Frenzy or the sparkeater so much as glanced her way, her talons extended and her vocalizer snarled and she found herself thinking about all the ways there were to offline them all. She managed not to throw herself at the walls of her new box when that happened, but it was close.

She even did it when the drones passed her way, and they didn't even have sparks!

Of course, without her wings, she couldn't get spark signatures. Maybe the sparkeater didn't have one, and all that was behind his chest plates was teeth. How could grounders live with this uncertainty? Maybe Rumble and Frenzy--

No. They were real. They had to be real.

Right?

She missed them. But if she was in a box with them again, she might tear them apart like the glitch-mouse. She didn't want that.

A seeker of Vos does not bow. But what does she do when her very spark and processor betray her?

She didn't know.

*

Frenzy was in his second-least favorite situation, strapped to one of Shocky's examination tables, with the mech himself detaching bits of his neck armor to get a look at his vocalizer again. The only thing worse than this was when Rumble was in this situation, and he couldn't do anything about it. 

Somewhere nearby, Delta Six was reading, and the Seekerlet was snarling, and Rumble was running through all the curses they'd ever learned on the streets, in order of how mad they made people. It was depressing how normal this was getting.

Shocky finished exposing the internals of Frenzy's neck, and glanced away from him, reaching for tools. Frenzy switched off his optics, trying to think of something, anything else. 

"I've got it!" Delta Six shouted.

Frenzy lit his optics. Shocky had paused, and wasn't looking at him at all. Delta Six appeared in his line of vision, obnoxiously shiny as ever.

"What is it, Knock Out?" Shocky asked, apparently unbothered by the interruption.

From this angle, it was hard to tell, but Frenzy thought Delta Six was beaming. "Seekers need the sky."

"I believe we've established that."

"No, sir, they _need_ it. Like Energon or coolant or lubricant. They _need_ it." Delta Six brought up a data pad. "Look, here's a tracking of the vitals for a warbuild mech deprived of Energon. See the microfractures? Battle programming took over higher processing ten cycles in. And then here, nanite production just stops." He brought up another data pad. "Here's Delta Seven's vitals. Microfractures. Battle programming, one point two quartexes into our examination. Possibly delayed because she'd never activated it before. And then last cycle, her nanite production stopped altogether."

"We'll need to increase the dosage for her nanite supplements, then," Shocky said.

"Already on the charts. The point is, it's the same process, just spread over a longer time."

Shocky glanced toward where Frenzy knew the Seekerlet was pacing in her box. "You are suggesting that sky fever is not so much a disease as a slow starvation."

Delta Six nodded. "Exactly. And, if that's the case--we can make synthetic Energon. Why not a synthetic sky?"

From there the conversation switched mostly to Cy-Stan, which Frenzy couldn't follow at all. The only relevant part to him was that Shocky suddenly grabbed him and put him back with Rumble--without giving back his neck armor, rude. The air moving over all the exposed wiring always tickled.

A cycle without being disassembled alive was nice, but Rumble of course was also worried about the Seekerlet. Frenzy joined his twin in watching the big mechs fuss around the bitlet's box, installing a fan and setting up a screen playing videos of the sky over some city right outside her box.

She tried to claw at them, of course, but they'd both gotten practiced at staying out of her reach. Frenzy cheered the one time she managed to get the tip of Shocky's digit. She grinned at him across the room, weird agression for once all but invisible.

And then she saw what the screen was playing. For several long clicks she froze, staring at the screen, the rest of the lab forgotten.

Then she sat down in the middle of her box, directly in the path of the fan, and kept watching the screen. She looked relaxed, truly relaxed, for the first time since Frenzy had met her. Even in recharge, she twitched and muttered, but now she just watched that screen.

"I think it's working," Delta Six whispered.

"Perhaps," said Shocky. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note on languages:  
> I headcannon Cy-Stan, or Iaconian, as being the language of trade, science, and education for most of Cybertron, while also being nearly impossible to become fluent in without having access to a language chip. Yay classism.  
> How did Cy-Stan become so widespread? Probably the same way Latin and English did on Earth: at some point, its speakers decided to try invading the entire planet. The Quintessons might have had something to do with it.


	9. In Which There Is A Name

 

A few things Knock Out and Shockwave had discovered about subject Delta Seven over the past few cycles:

Sky fever was not an illness so much as a reaction to what the Seekerlet's systems categorized as another (illogical, as Shockwave noted repeatedly) kind of starvation. Mimicking the sky in an improvised simulation decreased the symptoms dramatically. Her battle protocols did not shut down, and likely never would again, but they did go into standby mode when she was looking at videos of the sky.

Increasing Energon availability also improved the subject's health. She did not always finish the second cube, but she did almost always start it, and her frame started repairing itself just a little better.

Attempting interaction with the subject still resulted in aggression, about seventy-five percent of the aggression she had displayed before. It was possible social interaction would improve this behavior, but they would need to inhibit her claws before testing that hypothesis.

Knock Out was taking care of that right now, while Shockwave did something to her coding. He hadn't asked. The claw caps were fiddly enough to install that he could effectively distract himself from wondering. Parts of them had to go under her tiny pieces of hand armor, winding around components, to keep her from simply removing them.

A cleaning drone kept running into a wall and distracting him, which only made the process take longer. Shockwave finished with the coding and started doing something behind him. Knock Out didn't look.

He finally had them secured on her talons when Shockwave spoke to him. "Once she wakes, put a drone in with her, and see if she manages to damage it. If not, you can put Delta Four and Delta Five in. I'll be back at 0700 jours next cycle."

Knock Out's processors stalled. "You're leaving?"

"Yes. I have business in the city." Turning, Knock Out could see that Shockwave had assembled a small mountain of data chips and several mysterious devices that Knock Out hadn't gathered the courage to ask about.

But Shockwave never left the lab. He sent out Knock Out or drones to take care of any "business" that might come up. The one exception was the cycle he'd found Knock Out, and Knock Out was pretty sure he'd hallucinated parts of that anyway.

Had it really been two vorns already?

"Is it safe?" Knock Out asked, a question Shockwave never scolded him for. Caution was logical, after all.

"It is necessary. I trust you will keep watch of the lab until my return."

"Yes, sir" was the only acceptable answer.

*

Her processor hurt. It did that a lot, the past few cycles. They must have done something while she was in recharge again.

She sat up slowly, glancing over her frame. Her thrusters were unchanged. Same with her legs. The paint on her midriff had scratched a bit more, but her internals felt the same.

Her hands, though. Her talons! Something was covering them. Something shiny and flexible and absolutely impossible to yank off, even by biting. It was red, which clashed horribly with the scraps of green paint still clinging to her armor. It covered the fine, sharp edges of her talons. And she could not get it off!

She keened. A Seeker without talons was like--well. Like a Seeker without wings. Barely a Seeker at all.

The shiny fragger's hand appeared in the box, holding a small cleaning drone. She leapt at the hand, clawing, but the something covering her hands made it impossible to slice him properly. He set down the drone and walked away without getting so much as a scratch. 

She glared at the drone. The urge to slice and tear and fight hadn't gone away, despite whatever they'd done to her processor. And a drone didn't have a spark to worry about. She leapt at it with a shriek of battle.

A jour later, she gave up, and sat on top of the slightly-scuffed drone with a huff. It kept gliding around the box, knocking into all the walls. If she could have got around its armor, she might have been able to bite its inner components and inflict some damage. But she couldn't.

The shiny fragger was smirking at her. She hissed at him. 

He got up and walked towards the minicons' box. She turned her attention to the screen, which was showing an acid rain storm over a canyon. She didn't want to see the minicons getting hurt. Frenzy usually made her look at something else when they took Rumble away.

So it was a surprise when the shiny fragger set Rumble and Frenzy down in front of her, and picked up the drone, knocking her over in the process.

She would have snarled at him, but Rumble was hugging her and Frenzy was peering at the things on her talons and the fan was on her legs and for the moment, there were things more important than snarling.

*

By the time the medic came, Soundwave could hear Blaster's mind, but only when they sat as close together as the bars would allow. So he had no idea what the medic was there for until he was already in Soundwave's cell.

Ordinary medic things, apparently. Putting patches over all the injuries his self repair hadn't managed to deal with, including on his faceplate. Finally. Checking his fuel pump and spark pulse and various other things that Soundwave didn't really understand. The medic understood them, but he did so without consciously thinking about it, which left Soundwave lost.

He'd never been to see a medic before, at least officially. His guardians had been worried a medic would realize there was something different about him and take him away.

Not that that was really a concern anymore.

The only injury that left the medic stymied was the one to his vocalizer. Apparently it would take several surgeries to get it in working order again. The medic shrugged and thought, _well, it's not like he'll need it_ , and left it be.

Soundwave and Blaster exchanged worried looks at that thought.

*

It was late in the off cycle. The lights were off, Delta Six was in recharge, Shocky was wherever he'd fragged off to, and the sparkling was running in a circle like a glitch-mouse on high grade. Really, what had Shocky expected when he started drugging her into recharge in the middle of the on-cycles? Her recharge schedule was a mess.

Frenzy had crammed himself into a corner of the box and had somehow fallen into recharge sitting up, out of the Seekerlet's path.

Rumble had never mastered that particular trick, though, so he was left watching her dash around. It was exhausting. "Kid," he called. The Seekerlet paused. "C'mere." He patted the floor next to him.

She sat next to him, talons twitching under the claw caps. Rumble smiled at her. "Want to learn more words?"

"Words," she echoed, nodding. Her optics were slightly dimmed. Maybe she'd managed to exhaust herself with all that running.

"Okay," he said, thinking. Parts of the frame, they hadn't taught her any of those. He tapped his optic. "Optic."

She mimicked him, tapping the optic Shocky had replaced. There was still a scar above and below it. It made her look older, despite the youthfully large optics. "Ob-tok."

"Optic," Rumble corrected her. He switched one optic off and on in a wink.

She winked back. "Optic."

"Good!"

Her smile made her all too obviously a sparkling.

They worked through hands, arms, and face next. Rumble was about to teach her 'pede' when the Seekerlet froze, staring at something behind him.

Rumble glanced over his shoulder at the screen. At some point it had switched feeds, and was now showing a meteor shower.

The Seekerlet approached it, hypnotized. "That," she said, pointing to one of the meteors, following its path down. "What that?"

"A meteor," Rumble replied. "Mee-tee-or."

"Meteor," she repeated, nodding. She tapped her narrow chest plates. "Meteor. Me."

Rumble reset his audials. "Meteor. You?" he asked, pointing at her.

She nodded vigorously. "Meteor, yes. Me." Her faceplates held a mixture of sad and happy that really didn't belong on a first-frame sparkling.

Rumble turned his back on the Seekerlet--on Meteor--and shook Frenzy awake. "You've got to hear this"

His twin's optics reluctantly flickered on. "This better be good," he groused.

"Bitlet picked a name. That good enough for you?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> She has a name! I picked this name months ago, but wasn't sure when would be good to bring it in. This seemed like the right time.


	10. Chapter 10

Nine cycles, Ravage had watched the building they'd dragged Soundwave to, and nine cycles, that pink mech had stared at the same building like it was a funny shaped piece in a puzzle.

This cycle, Ravage followed her away from Soundwave's prison.

Something was wrong; neither he nor Laserbeak had felt the faintest touch of Soundwave's telepathy, and they ought to have. The bond wasn't sending them large amounts of pain anymore, but whatever was happening had Soundwave scared badly. Ratbat and Buzzsaw too. Laserbeak was pretty sure they were stuck in an alleged hospital two blocks away.

No one gave him any trouble as he loped down the high walkways, apart from nervous glances at his claws. Mechs were so stupid sometimes, unable to tell the difference between a felinoid minicon and a dumb mechanimal. Tch.

The pink mech was wary, glancing over her shoulder every few clicks, but she didn't notice Ravage either.

He lost sight of her when she entered an apartment and closed the door behind her, but a little persuading of a floor vent kept him close to her. The exhaust fumes choking the air in the vent were a familiar discomfort. Ravage froze when he heard voices, still and quiet and listening. It sounded like a half dozen mechs were talking.

"You didn't find anything we can use?"

"Lots of the mechs we suspect are involved go in and out, but there are a lot of offices in there. There's no proof they're going to this secret basement facility, if it's really there."

"It's there. The gaps in the records all point to it."

Ravage slunk to a vent that one of the speakers was, apparently, standing on. He waited for their pede to shift.

"This would be easier if we still had Red Alert."

"Who knows? Maybe he's in there, and this'll be a rescue."

The mech above Ravage finally shifted their weight off the vent. Ravage reached a claw up to loosen it.

"So we haven't got any evidence that'll stand up in court?"

"Nothing involving that building, anyways."

"I wish we knew what they were doing in there..."

Well, Ravage wasn't going to get a better opening than that. "I think I can help with that," he announced, sticking his helm up out of the vent.

At least two of the mechs present gasped. Ravage bared his fangs in a grin.

*

The developing sparklings were coming along well. Knock Out expected to start seeing struts form within the next decacycle. It was still too early to tell what they'd be, but both were gaining mass quickly. Whatever they were, they'd likely be large. There was plenty of high-quality cybertronium and other important metals where they'd landed, so they wouldn't have any problems building the frames.

He finished typing up the progress report for Shockwave and stretched, stiff joints popping.

The lab was quiet. The fan in Delta Seven's box whirred softly. Four, Five, and Seven were all leaning against each other, whispering. The turbo-fox sniffed at a drone. Shockwave was out again. Knock Out wasn't going to ask why. Life was simpler that way.

"Ouchfraggit!"

He glanced at the noise. Four and Five stood apart from Seven, who was snarling again. Five had his hand curled against himself. Knock Out could just see the telltale blue of Energon.

"She bit me! You bit me! With your mouth! " Five continued, oblivious to Seven's continued snarls.

Which abruptly stopped. Seven's optics flicked several times.

"Frenzy?" she asked softly, sounding confused.

Four huffed. "She's back. And that barely sliced anything, calm down."

"This time," Five muttered, but he joined his twin in hugging the Seekerlet, who was starting to keen again.

"We'll just have to figure out a way to help her not do that anymore, then," Four said.

Knock Out noted the interaction down. Shockwave was going to be interested in this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter is short, but I didn't want to leave you all on a cliffie.
> 
> In happier news, the line "you bit me, with your mouth" is from the Laika film The Boxtrolls, which I cannot recommend highly enough. I've been looking for an excuse to use it for years.


End file.
